


Weave the Circle Thrice

by MilesHibernus



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Crowley is a demon, Demons can be summoned, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Torture, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:14:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26764879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilesHibernus/pseuds/MilesHibernus
Summary: As if talking to a not-very-bright child, the summoner said, “If you do as you’re told I won’t have to hurt you.”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Kudos: 21
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Weave the Circle Thrice

**Author's Note:**

> OK, looks like Whumptober is happening. I doubt I can get all the prompts into one storyline, and the odds are low I'll get to them all anyway, but hey...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains the following prompts:  
> #1 Waking up restrained  
> #2 Kidnapping (by way of demon summoning)  
> #6 "Please stop"  
> #11 Defiance  
> #14 Fire  
> #31 Torture

Crowley came back to himself in stages. First was the smell-taste of incense and burning wax, good beeswax candles too, he was blearily impressed. Then he realised that he ached all over, as if he’d been squeezed through a hole just a bit too small for him.1 And he was _cold_ , which wasn’t helped by the surface he lay on, concrete at a guess. Then he heard a voice, muttering _bloody hell it worked i knew it i knew it holy fucking shit_. He opened his eyes to see a ceiling that was more the underside of a floor, exposed joists with wiring stapled to them.

Then he noticed that his wings were out. Out and jammed uncomfortably against empty air, forming the edge of a circle. He closed his eyes again, in the vain hope he was dreaming, but even his dreams were never this vivid.

 _Bugger everything_ , he thought, _I’ve been **summoned**_.

Crowley had spent a solid two decades near the end of the eighteenth century searching out valid demon-summoning rituals and dispensing with them—the nastiest ones he’d corrupted to summon other entities entirely, most just changed enough that they no longer worked or simply destroyed—and had gotten a commendation for it. 2 He’d dangerously depleted his reserves in the process, and had slept for far too long afterwards; Aziraphale had been already inclined to be angry with him for the vanishing act even before he’d asked for the holy water.

“I missed one,” he croaked, and only realised he’d spoken aloud when the triumphant muttering cut off.

“Demon!” said the voice, much louder. Crowley ignored it in favor of rolling onto his side. Cold concrete on his hip and ribs brought home the fact that he was _naked_ , too, and he scrabbled for enough focus to clothe himself. He managed a garment that covered what on a human would be ‘the essentials’3, but the effort left him gasping. “Demon,” said the voice again. Crowley assumed it was the summoner. He levered himself up on one elbow, barely remembering not to pin his wing down. He so rarely dealt with wings on the material plane. His hair fell over his forehead.

“I am thy master, demon,” the voice said, and Crowley turned his head. A man in a dark robe stood just outside the outer ring of a circle on the bare floor. He was youngish by human standards and handsome in a bland, unmemorable way that reminded Crowley of an American actor whose name he couldn’t recall. Bacon? Something like that. He shook his head and allowed the man’s words to actually register.

“Yeah,” he drawled. “People have told me that before. Didn’t work out so well for any of them.”

This statement had the dual advantages of being both true4 and threatening, while also affording him the malicious amusement of watching the demon-summoner flail as his internal script for How This Was Supposed To Go got derailed. He blinked and rallied, but not before Crowley noted with some satisfaction that he wasn’t all that quick on his mental feet. “Erm. I am thy master, demon, and I require that thee lendeth me—”

“Oh, shut it,” Crowley snapped, and finished sitting up. “‘That thou lendest’. If you can’t do it right, stop bloody trying.” He felt better already, the effects of the summoning fading fast, but his wings still butted up against the limits of his prison. Crowley eyed the lines. They were painted, not chalked, which suggested a worrying degree of forethought. He climbed to his feet.

The summoner’s expression drew down into anger and he said, “You can’t talk to me like that.” He sounded more petulant than anything else.

“Pretty sure I just did,” Crowley replied, smirking.

“We’ll see about that,” said the summoner, and turned to a small table that was cluttered with paraphernalia: a book, a metal bowl, several knives and three lit candles, and that was all Crowley had a chance to catalogue before the man picked up a poppet and thrust one of its hands into a candle flame.

Demons are immune to fire, Hellish or otherwise, as Crowley and Aziraphale had conclusively proven during and after the averted Apocalypse, so it had actually been quite a long time since Crowley had _burned_. The noise he made missed being a scream only because it was full of as much surprise as pain, and he crumpled to his knees, curling around the afflicted hand.

This was almost entirely for show.

The feeling of burning that the poppet was transferring to his corporation’s hand was painful, even extremely painful; he did not like it at all and very much wanted it to stop. But for a being whose clear memories began in a lake of boiling sulphur, it was strictly small-time, and after the first moment of shock he was able to think again. It would be to his advantage for the summoner to think Crowley more affected than he really was, and you don’t live more than six millennia as a demon without picking up _some_ acting chops.5

After about thirty seconds, the man pulled the poppet out of the flame. Crowley let out a gasp of relief and raised his head, his chest heaving. He even managed to work up tears, which wasn’t as difficult as he might have liked. Another thing that didn’t please him was what he saw. The summoner was watching him with an avid, greedy look that Crowley recognized from lamentable experience; this man _liked_ to inflict pain.

“Now we’re going to talk about what you’re going to do for me,” said the summoner.

“When I get out of this circle they’re going to be finding your body for weeks,” Crowley snarled. As predictably as a robot executing its programming, the summoner put the poppet back into the flame, both feet this time. Crowley shrieked and folded in on himself, counting seconds in his head. It was over a minute this time.

As soon as the pain eased Crowley said flatly, “Fuck you.” It wouldn’t do to give in too easily. Back into the flame, torso, a good three minutes, and by the end of it he actually was crying a bit.

The summoner gave him a few seconds of recovery time—which Crowley did, in fact, somewhat need—before saying, “Are you ready to do as you’re told?”

Crowley swallowed a theatrical sob and glared. The summoner raised one eyebrow6 and made as if to move the poppet towards the candle. Crowley lunged for the edge of the circle and flattened his hands on the solid air. “ _No please don’t_ ,” he gasped, as if the words were being torn from him. He made his eyes wide and frightened.

As if talking to a not-very-bright child, the summoner said, “If you do as you’re told I won’t have to hurt you.”

And that was it, that was bingo. Even as he gave a shaky nod, casting his eyes down, Crowley’s thoughts were racing. The summoner liked pain, yes, but more than that he liked _control_. Having it, over others. It was just a little bonus for him that pain was a _means_ of control. “Tell me what you want,” said Crowley, in a voice without much inflection. It was more than a little insulting that this utter berk believed Crowley could be beaten so easily, but this type thought they were just _that good._

The summoner stared at him for several seconds, and even looking through his eyelashes Crowley could see how pleased the man was; it was written in every line of his body that he relished the feeling, making Crowley wait for his judgement like this. “What’s it to be, then, power? Riches? Women?”

“You’re going to find someone,” said the summoner at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 This was, in fact, roughly what had happened.back
> 
> 2 It had mostly been self-interest, as he was after all the most likely demon to be the target, but since some few of the rituals had had the power to pull demons out of Hell itself, they’d approved the whole venture post-facto, retroactively claiming it was their idea the whole time, as usual.back
> 
> 3 Crowley was neither shy nor ashamed, but nakedness, for most humans, implies vulnerability and under the circumstances that was not a message he felt he could afford to send.back
> 
> 4 Though of course he would have said it even if it weren’t.back
> 
> 5 Well, you do if you are most demons, but Crowley wasn’t.back
> 
> 6 Sometimes Crowley wanted to kick himself. Introducing that particular gesture to the human race was one such time.back


End file.
